Persistent changes on LiveCD

From Granular Linux Documentation

Introduction

Usually, there is no way in which one can save changes on a Live CD so that upon the next reboot from the same Live CD, all the settings are saved while using the Live CD previously. These settings may include:

• Desktop preferences (like wallpaper, screensaver, etc.)
• New software installations (manual or through Synaptic Package Manager)
• Media library in Amarok
• Cache, settings, passwords in Firefox
• and so on...

In this tutorial, you'll see that there indeed is a way to actually save all your settings and preferences even when working in the Live mode. That is, it is possible to make all these changes "persistent" in the Live CD mode as well.

Tutorial

• When the LiveCD starts up, you see a grey background with a list of options for booting (GRUB splash). Near the bottom of this screen, you'll find something written as Boot Options.
• Now you have to edit the boot options to make your changes persistent. For example, you choose to boot through the default option -- Granular. For this entry, you'll see something like this in the Boot Options text box (near the bottom of the screen):

livecd=livecd initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=791 keyb=us splash=silent fstab=rw,auto

• Move the cursor using the cursor key on your keyboard to navigate to the starting of this text. Now edit this text to look like this:

livecd=livecd changes=/dev/xxx initrd=initrd.gz root=/dev/rd/3 acpi=on vga=791 keyb=us splash=silent fstab=rw,auto

where tweak the "changes" entry according to the partition where you want to save all the configuration. Say you have a partition hda1 (or it may be sda1 or hdc1 or sda2 or whatever, depending on whether you use an ATA hard-disk or a SATA one). In this case, you would edit the changes entry to look like: changes=/dev/hda1. This will create a folder called "changes" in the root of the selected partition which would contain all the configuration changes, created files, or installed programs during the LiveCD mode. Remember not to use a NTFS partition as Granular cannot write on it. Preferably choose an ext2, ext3, or reiserfs parition (even a FAT partition will do).